


Each word is a Dagger in Me

by orphan_account



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: F/M, Gen, rivalbroship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-04
Updated: 2013-02-04
Packaged: 2017-11-28 04:51:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/670469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carver joined the Templars. Hawke watched.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Each word is a Dagger in Me

**Author's Note:**

> Help I'm having Carver/Hawke rivalbroship feelings.

When Carver joined the Templars, Hawke watched. 

It had been a dreary day in Kirkwall, not unlike all the others, not special in any way. The entire city smelled like fish, but the Gallows especially. Hawke had been back from the Deep Roads for no less than three days, but there it was. 

Carver was gone. 

There was nothing to say, or nothing to do, except glare up at the circle tower like it had done her a personal wrong. It had, essentially, though she could not walk around blaming a bloody building when it was her idiot brother that had gone and done the deed. 

It felt better, to blame the building. 

But then her trusty dwarven partner in crime would come and talk her out of whatever half-crazed might-actually-work plan to knock it over by somehow exploding the mountain that stood behind it like some banner across the sky, accompanied by the woman-shaped battering ram that was Aveline. 

They'd talk her down, whisk her away. 

To safer nights in the Hanged Man. 

* * *

Carver returned when they went to Orlais.

It wasn't intentional at all, but it had been three years since she had last seen him in his fancy Templar skirt. Dress. Skirt. It was nice to see him, Hawke supposed, but she could not help but eye his uniform, fearing the new talents he undoubtibly had. 

He had been easy enough to deal with when all he could do was wave his sword around, but now he could take her magic away. 

She wasn't loving it. 

Tallis had been a disaster and Carver had thrown a fit, but Hawke had noticed a distinct lack of mage hating coming from her brother's mouth. 

It could have been because Merrill was trailing behind Hawke, but she didn't say anything about it. 

She did, however, collect five sovereigns from Anders when they returned to Kirkwall a week later. 

* * *

When Fenris up and left, after their night, Carver was not there. 

Isabella was there, with Merrill, and a large jug of wine, but not Carver. 

Not that Hawke expected Carver, Maker no. That would have been awkward. At least they could have braided each other's hair and done their toenails with all the time he spent in that bloody skirt. 

Fenris was another deal entirely, anyway. A great big ball of awkwardness and  _how_ exactly she got him to actually appreciate her mageness, Hawke would never understand. 

Hawke recieved a letter to Carver from his old flame back home, a girl with— as Hawke remembered, a large pair of breasts and not too much happening upstairs. 

She managed to lose the letter. He was a Templar now, wasn't he supposed to be chaste?

* * *

Carver wasn't there when they went to the giant warden prison. 

Fenris and Anders are, though, so she figured it was about the same. Varric, too. What could go wrong, when she had her boys and her trusty dwarven elbow rest? 

The words hadn't even gotten out of her mouth yet before they really were in trouble. 

Then there were ancient curses to deal with, blood magic, their father. Things to deal with, ancient gods to destroy. Hawke was busy, everyone knew how it was. 

It was like people didn't actually remember how to get themselves out of a sticky mess anymore. It was getting to a point of riddiculousness. 

Despite her busy schedule, and almost dying, and almost getting locked up in that damn underground prison, Hawke made it back to Kirkwall and spent three hours in the Gallows, debating whether or not to march into the circle and tell Carver all about it. 

The old her would have. The Hawke that snuck into Cailan's army before Ostagar because her little brother was off playing soldier and she had felt a bad feeling. Their father had already passed and their mother had been full of grief, and goddammit if Carver didn't have the oddest knack for getting into trouble. 

She'd carried his limp body away and stolen the nearest horse. 

They'd barely gotten to Lothering before the blight had come and everything had started. 

In fact, in her second year in Kirkwall, Hawke had damn near punched Aveline about that. Carver still didn't know about it, see, though Aveline did— there were some things that you talked about when it was just girls and there had been too much pisswine. Aveline wanted to tell Carver. 

Hawke had forbidden it. He didn't need to know. Might hurt his  _feelings_. 

So she stood, in the drizzle, outside the circle. For nearly three hours. She had been covered in grime and dirt and blood that was probably twenty years old at that point, running it through in her brain. 

"Hey, brother, just stopped by to tell you that our father had been forced into blood magic by the heroes of every story we ever heard as kids, how about that?" 

The mere thought of it brought a ironic tear to her eye. She just didn't have enough sass in her entire body to pull that one off. 

Sorry, Carver, Hawke thought.  _You'll just have to win that story out of Isabela_. 

* * *

When Leandra died, Carver was not there. 

* * *

It was the silliest thing, really, thinking about Carver when their mother was dead and burning in some scum-pit beneath Kirkwall. Hawke had tried to carry her corpse out, but could not do it. It was tainted by dark magic, it reacted badly to her. 

So istead they built her a pyre, and burned her. The old way. 

Wasn't so pretty, perhaps, but it was an honorable burial. 

Her friends had gone unnaturally silent, sitting in her library in her estate. She hadn't moved in some time, by the way her bones were stiff and the way that her feet hurt. 

Hawke really could not tell if she wanted to burst out laughing or weep. Maybe a little bit of both? 

And then there was the pacing. The wailing, because whatever had been keeping it all in was gone and there was some keening noise coming from somewhere until Hawke realized it was coming out of her own mouth. Pacing, and crying, a hand reaching out for her shoulder. 

All the while under the stern guidance of Malcolm that said  _be careful, even at our weakest, darkest moment, we are in danger of demons_. 

Unfair how the rest of the world could grieve normally but Hawke has to sit there and meditate over her mother's still burning corpse. 

"Aveline," Hawke said, once the wailing was done. Her nose was runny and her eyes were swollen, and it was probably four in the morning, but Hawke was still awake. "You have to go tell him." 

Aveline stirred from the chair. "That can wait, Hawke." 

It was her 'I'm-the-mother-of-this-operation-Hawke' voice. It accompanied Varric's 'Don't-interupt-us-when-mommy-and-daddy-are-talking-Hawke' voice. 

On more than one occassion, Hawke had pulled what she called a 'the-children-don't-like-it-when-mommy-and-daddy-fight' voice. "No," Hawke said. "It will be everywhere by morning, if it isn't already." She turned to look at Aveline. Bethany was dead, too, Maker. Dead for four, five years? "It would be better for him to hear it from one of us." 

Hawke turned and put her forehead against the fireplace mantle. 

She could just imagine his angry face. Bollocks. "Maker, he will hate me for the rest of his life." 

Fenris and Isabella stay with Hawke well into the morning. Varric slept on the table in the library. 

Hawke stayed up until the sun was well in the sky, just talking to Fenris. Fenris alone seemed to sense her inability to sleep, in fear of nightmare. 

He seemed to understand that she was afraid of summoning demons when she slept. 

So if it bothered Hawke that Fenris kept a hand on the blade that she had once bought for him, she did not comment. 

Carver did not come, or send a letter. 

Then the Qunari/Isabela disaster imploded and Hawke had no time. 

* * *

When Hawke did see Carver again, she was covered in Qunari blood and her pirate queen was long since gone. 

They made no mention of their mother, or anything that might have passed since Orlais. 

Which seemed like an illegal amount of time ago, when Hawke paused to think about it. 

They storm up the steps to the Viscount's Keep, but Carver does not follow them in. It was a horridly brief time to see her brother, but then Hawke had to fight a goddamn Arishok with nothing but her mage robes, a staff, and a very brave mabari. 

Needless to say, it wasn't her bravest moment. 

It mostly involved freezing the Arishok's boots and then running around in circles until she could freeze him again. 

Fenris may have called her a 'damned mage' and Varric might have laughed and scribbled in his notebook, but Hawke did not notice. 

When it was all over and done, Isabela was back, the Arishok dead, the gentry of Kirkwall saved, but Carver was, once again, gone. 

And Hawke got no letters. 

* * *

The flurry of the next years passed, and Hawke did not hear from her brother.

In a strange way, Hawke knew, she learned to live without him. It was just something that had to be done— he was a Templar, and she was a mage. She was allowed her freedom because Meredith saw her value. She was useful.

Hawke knew that the moment she ceased to be useful was the moment they locked her up. Maybe even turned her tranquil, if they didn't think that the right people would throw fits.

Namely Guard-Captains and Merchant Princes.

What could Hawke say? She chose her friends very well.  

The Qunari were gone, but the mage/templar issue remained. It was the one that she dreaded most, because somehow, Hawke knew that she and Carver would remain on opposite sides. 

And she did not want to be responsible for killing the last member of her family. 

Fenris tried to convince her to run, after Danarius was dead and Fenris back in the shadowy corner of her bedroom that he preferred when he was over. Tried to convince her to go to Par Vollen, or back to Orlais— even back to Ferelden, with her cousin at the Circle there. 

But they had Carver. She didn't have a philactary. But the Templars would use him to the same end. 

So she did not run. She tried to keep the order as much as she possibly could, but she did not run. 

* * *

Anders died by her hand. 

It was not something that she wanted. There had been a night, after Leandra died, when Hawke had gone to Anders specifically in his run-down crappy little infirmary and confessed that if she saw one more innocent person die that meant something to her, she'd throw herself off the Viscount's Tower. 

That he was the one to make that a self-fullfilling prophecy, was a betrayal the likes that Hawke had never, ever seen. 

Only Merrill seemed actually dismayed. Isabela had her hands clenched in fists around her blades, Aveline had a hard, sharp line to her lips. Varric looked harder than Hawke had ever seen him. 

So Hawke ended it quickly, with just a simple promise. "Your name will never be spoken again." 

And then he died. 

Sebastian stood, silent, jaw drooped slightly open. Apparently he hadn't expected her to actually do it. And to think, she had encouraged the bastard to retake his precious Starkhaven throne. So when he wanted his vengence and used it to threaten her, he hadn't expected Hawke to keep her word. 

Stupid Starkhaven prince. "Consider yourself no longer one of my allies," Hawke said to him. She'd give him to the end of this disaster. Then if she ever saw him again, she'd sick her mabari on him. 

Some things just broke a person so much that there was nothing left of the original when all was dead and done. 

And then, later—

"Don't make me tear up in front of the others, you jackass." 

"Onions in the collar," Carver said. "Aveline's idea." 

Hawke could have kicked Aveline.

"I'm proud to call you sister," Carver said, suddenly. "That's gone unsaid too long."

 


End file.
